VHS

Heading down to @vanhackspace to finish up my Atari Punk Console & many other miscellaneous tasks.

2009-11-11T02:12:45+00:00

Heading down to @vanhackspace to finish up my Atari Punk Console & many other miscellaneous tasks.

@VanHackSpace Unfortunately, I can't go to #VHS, but people who can should go

2009-11-11T01:57:28+00:00

@VanHackSpace Unfortunately, I can&apost go to #VHS, but people who can should go

@infil00p but tonight we will have many people soldering! Surely that's better than your day so far! :)

2009-11-11T01:55:42+00:00

@infil00p but tonight we will have many people soldering! Surely that&aposs better than your day so far! :)

Where Data Lives on Android

2009-11-09T14:52:09+00:00

Recently, I’ve been looking at the old Audio Handler code that was contributed a while back and why it can only play on the SD Card. I assumed that there was some weird permission issue that didn’t allow for data to be written in other parts of the device, but I didn’t look into it too closely until recently.

In PhoneGap, the files that are being loaded are stored in the assets directory. The decision to do this was because they could be accessed through file://android_assets, and this seemed to be rather convenient for the time, since I wanted to prove that you could in theory take the HTML and Javascript from an iPhone PhoneGap app, and put it into an Android App and have it still work. However, the issue is that this is not really a file location.

All files in the Android solution are zipped up and compiled into an apk, which is signed and installed on a phone. Dalvik comes across this package, and runs this package much like a traditional Java VM runs a JAR. The big difference is that if you’re trying to do things like access a file natively, store data into a database, or run an executable, this doesn’t work. Now, in the past, we just used the SD card for when we needed file storage, BUT last week when figuring out the WebKit SQLite Support for Android 2.0, I discovered where the data actually was being stored on the device, in the /data/data/package_name/ directories.

I then decided to look at how other people are using this storage, and I checked out the Orbot project. A while back, I had a passing interest in porting Cryptographic tools such as OTR and Tor onto Android so that I could have this on my phone. However, other people who are more dedicated to making awesome things, actually made this happen with Orbot, and shared the source. I saw that they were grabbing an executable written in C, and storing it in the data directory. This allows for ARM code to be run on the device, and allows people to get around the Android SDK, and the problems that it has.

So, I’m faced with a dilemma. Do I keep with storing the data in the assets directory, or do I copy the www directory to the /data/data/app_name/www directory and allow the files to sit in the Application FS storage? Will there be an issue on initial install? Will Android PhoneGap require a loading screen where we do this sort of heracy? Putting layout and executable code in the /data/data directory herasy? What do you think?

ScanLife’s 2D code system – Flaws, privacy, and whatnot

2009-11-09T00:32:37+00:00

A while ago, I covered a bit on Metro News’ and other publications’ implementation of ScanLife’s 2D barcode system for users of smart phones.

I have gotten a bit interested in it seeing that it has advertised itself as a better alternative to QR and data matrix codes. This seemed unlikely and I began to take a look.

Ed: forgive any weird grammar or spelling errors here.

ScanLife’s software

Primarily, all major smartphone devices on the market today can run ScanLife’s software. My Nokia E71 had no issues installing the software at all and it seems that installing it on the iPhone or Android platforms is trivial too. However, I will have to say that the software is rather buggy. Countless times while testing the EZcode barcodes, the software would claim that the camera is in use and refuse to take over. This seems to happen only when I cancel a code after I it has retrieved information regarding the code or interrupt it after it started to attempt a connection to the website I just scanned.

Having to restart the phone each time the software bugged out was just annoying and I certainly hope that ScanLife fixes this annoyance.

Here’s a look at how the software should normally operate:

For some reason, the icon reminds me of a man running.

ScanLife finds some prey!

Connecting through my little packet sniffer.

Do you want to read this crappy article by a bankrupt newspaper?

Not much to it. It seems as simple as your standard QR and DM code reader that a lot of phones include. In fact, it almost seems unnecessary save for the fact that their reader reads the EZcode and so far no other reader out there exists.

Communication with ScanLife

ScanLife appears to have one main system–it’s not really “just one”, but I’ll explain later. When your phone communicates with ScanLife, it connects to app.scanlife.com (98.129.7.179), which also happens to be the same host for scanlife.com. It connects via an unencrypted HTTP link and has no qualms about connecting either via a data service (EDGE, HSDPA, etc) or via another method (Wi-Fi or Bluetooth). The process works basically like this:

A really, really crummy diagram.

After the snapshot is taken and it is requested that a connection is made, the ScanLife software sends the following bits of information (this is off of a barcode I had made pointing at google.ca):

GET /resolver/barcoderesolver?
sdkid=17087727&
licenseid=17089923&
userid=[23-digit string of numbers]&
barcode=A119A0000000000E01&
btype=EZ&
appid=17007085&
language=en_us&
guid=&
mktqfeed=false&
smsc=+[10-digit phone number]

The USERID component doesn’t appear to be related to the IMEI or anything from the phone itself–at least it is not apparent. What’s also interesting is that the SMSC string contains the SMS gateway for my mobile phone carrier. I am guessing that they use this to identify which carrier you’re connecting from–this is likely done just in case the user connects via Wi-Fi.

The ScanLife software is also able to scan QR and data matrix codes with ease. There isn’t much different in its request string minus the barcode being reported as the URL itself:

GET /resolver/barcoderesolver?
sdkid=17087727&
licenseid=17089923&
userid=[same 23-digit string]&
barcode=http://google.ca&
btype=QR&
appid=17007085&
language=en_us&
guid=&
mktqfeed=false&
smsc=+[same SMS gateway]

With data matrix, it just places “DM” under BTYPE.

One interesting thing to note is that it doesn’t seem to matter to ScanLife what format the barcode is in when it comes to BARCODE string. I was able to place the same string (A119A0000000000E01) into a data matrix code and it returned back the same information as the EZcode–this suggests to me that the data is just plaintext in whatever format EZcode adopted. I will note a bit later in this post what it does with BARCODE strings that are in non-ScanLife formats.

How ScanLife keeps track of your phone OS is also quite simple. The SDKID indicates which particular ScanLife program you’re using. In the case of Symbian, it will give an SDKID of 17087727. For Android, it’s 17087728. Oddly, the Android version doesn’t feed the SMSC when making a request.

After the data has been sent to ScanLife’s servers, it responds back with XML data resembling the following (it’s quite a bit so I’ll break it apart):

<codeset numactions="1" title="Test to Google">
<action title="Test to Google" type="web" typeid="7">
<property name="url" type="tx">http://google.ca</property>

This data is pretty straightforward. When I created the barcode on ScanLife’s server, it let me set an internal name for me to refer to and a description to let the public see. Nothing really nefarious here.

The stuff that comes after these three lines gets a bit interesting.

The barcode itself

The barcode in itself is a very basic 2D system that is essentially 11 pixels by 11 pixels. Thanks to ScanLife’s whitepaper (mirror available here), it works out basically like this:

Possibly my best artwork! Also, the software doesn’t scan it when the whole thing is filled out–I’ve tried.

While the capacity is potentially able to hit 83 bits, in reality, it will only be able to store a maximum of 76-bits–the rest is used for error correction. Based on hamming vectors, it’s capable of 5 pixels (7%) damage before the code is completely unreadable. However, in real world tests, having removed a pixel from the code itself either made it unreadable or gives off an incorrect result. This is in stark contrast to QR where I have removed 1/6th of a 21×21 code and it was still readable–this is the beauty of error correction, folks.

Here are some comparrisons between QR and EZcode.

		| QR		 | EZcode
--------------------------------------------------
Max capacity:	| 6.9 KB	 | 76-bits
		| (4.2 alphanum.)|
		| (2.9 binary)	 |
		|		 |
Max error cor.: | 7-30%		 | 7%
		|		 |
Min size:	| 2x2 cm	 | 1.25x1.25 cm
		| 0.78x0.78 in.	 | 0.5x0.5 in.
		|		 |
Mix size (px.):	| 21x21		 | 11x11

The main reason why I wanted to compare the two was because they’re both being used by publishers in print format. It’s not uncommon to come across a QR code in a European or Asian newspaper or magazine. One other thing to note about my table is that while I used the term “px” (or “pixels”), it really should mean “modules”. However, if you look at a code, you’ll think “pixels” before “modules” anyway.

So when a code is created, the barcode will contain something akin to the following:

A119A0000000000E01
A119A0000000000E02

I took a look at a few other codes (taken from a copy of The Metro) to see how they match up against my own:

A119A0000000000A51
A119A0000000000A57
A119A0000000000A69
A119A0000000000A6F

Holy crap! The numbers just keep increasing! To make matters interesting, you can just simply up the value (they’re in base-16) see what other codes were produced. In the case of The Metro, I was able to find EZcodes for Edmonton’s and Toronto’s editions.

This is probably the biggest mistake that ScanLife could have made. Why? Because now I can troll their entire database for potential private data! Why couldn’t have they figured out a hash function that could have fit within the 76-bits of data is beyond me. The codes would still in theory be troll-able, but it wouldn’t be as ridiculously bad as this.

Here is an example script (written in Python, presumes you have wget installed) that’ll let you download a range of barcodes (from A00 to AFF, feeding it decimal numbers between 000 and 255 to make it work). It’s very limited because at this time, I don’t wish to make a full-blown script to download their whole database. This is solely an example and nothing more.

To make this even more funny, it was pointed out to me that you can grab future codes this way as well. By increasing the value, you will run across errors in the XML data that tell you that the code won’t be valid until a certain date. This could be a potential method to get into news articles that haven’t been released yet.

Working with the server and the software

One of the things I came across quite quickly after scanning the codes for the first time is that it doesn’t seem to give a damn about the User-Agent string. The default User-Agent given by the client is simply “SimpleClient 1.0″.

A search for this particular string gives off some interesting results. It seems that a lot of example code taken from Nokia could potentially be embedded in the software. I could also be wrong as it could be an internal code name.

Connecting to the service with a browser like Firefox with no attributes following gives off the following error:

[START][DM][INFO]The system cannot resolve the barcode.
The barcode is missing from the request.[END]

Feeding it just the string given off from one of the previous codes gives off the following:

[START][DM][DATA]1|041google.ca|Test to Google|scanbuy[END]

However, feeding it the whole string of data that it normally would get returns back the XML data (with history and everything):

Being told your life story every time you request some information would be painful and time-consuming.

It is a bit disturbing to see that it returns your history data every time you request a link. On top of that, it wastes valuable bandwidth–mobile phone data rates tend to be rather expensive depending on what country you’re in. The XML data totals to 2 KB whereas the non-XML data came out to 59-bytes. Is there a limit on how large (or old) the XML file will get before it starts to remove old data?

However, there is a way to get the data in XML format without having to receive a load of useless data. Simply just supply the following attributes:

barcode=A119A0000000000E01
appid=17007085

It will in turn return just this much code (a bit chopped off on the right, but you get the idea):

Going on an XML diet.

I’d rather have this result, especially if I am using my HSDPA connection.

One of the other things about the XML code is interesting is the TYPEID under <ACTION>. By changing the variable around, I found that it did the following:

Requests to call phone number
Create new contact (within ScanLife?) *
SMS message creation *
E-mail creation *
N/A
Unsupported barcode
Requests to open website

The ones that are masked with the asterisk (*) allows the software to perform the function without intervention from the user–in the case of SMS and e-mail, it launched the messaging application without my permission. This is quite disturbing and is ripe for abuse.

One final aspect I’d like to touch upon with the software is how the dialogue boxes are produced. I don’t have an example at this time to give, but basically the gist of it is that there is some laziness involved here and basically the software is told what to display in the dialogue box instead of the software being told there is an error and then producing a dialogue box from there.

It’s kind of asinine and really easy to exploit. I did fiddle around with it after redirecting traffic from app.scanlife.com to one of my internal servers and managed to get it display other URLs with the intended URL itself (in the hopes of masquerading) but didn’t get very far. Perhaps I will look into this later.

So what can be done with this information?

Well, I won’t go too much into this, but this could be a potential for open source development. Instead of relying on ScanLife to provide the URLs, perhaps a mirror service could be created and thus have all of the codes stored elsewhere. Creating EZcodes outside of ScanLife’s realm doesn’t seem very practical, but at the very least the codes can be mirrored.

The whitepaper that I provided should allow one to create a reader. Perhaps someone could integrate this into the Android reader and allow one to switch between ScanLife’s service or their own? A nice, non-bandwidth-hogging version would be great for those who have data plans that are quite limited.

ScanLife’s Servers

I don’t want to delve too much into this, but I did decide to see what sort of servers ScanLife had scattered around. A WHOIS of the IP given earlier reveals that they have a block of available IPs:

Rackspace.com, Ltd. RSCP-NET-4 (NET-98-129-0-0-1)
                                  98.129.0.0 - 98.129.255.255
SCANBUY INC RSPC-1213288687252329 (NET-98-129-7-176-1)
                                  98.129.7.176 - 98.129.7.191

None of the IPs that are hosted at Rackspace have any sort of rDNS enabled. Using some readily available tools, I was able to determine a what the majority of their hosts are under the scanlife.com domain. They’re as follows:

98.129.7.179	scanlife.com
98.129.7.180	serv1.scanlife.com
98.129.7.181	serv2.scanlife.com
98.129.7.179	app.scanlife.com
94.236.61.145	blog.scanlife.com
216.104.161.119	dk.scanlife.com
216.104.161.219	dk.scanlife.com
216.104.161.119	es.scanlife.com
216.104.161.219	es.scanlife.com
98.129.7.179	ftp.scanlife.com
94.236.59.90	helpdesk.scanlife.com
98.129.7.179	mail.scanlife.com
216.104.161.219	mx.scanlife.com
216.104.161.119	mx.scanlife.com
216.175.243.8	qa.scanlife.com
216.104.161.219	us.scanlife.com
216.104.161.119	us.scanlife.com
98.129.7.179	www.scanlife.com
207.97.244.81	x.scanlife.com

A scan of scanbuy.com’s subdomains netted nothing interesting. However, it seems that both serv1.scanbuy.com and serv2.scanbuy.com are the two domains to be interested in. Connecting to both directly redirects you to scanlife.com, which suggests to me that there is some load-balancing action going on here.

This suggests that ScanLife isn’t gambling here and has at least two available servers for users to go through in case of problems. However, this has its benefits and drawbacks–the main drawback I wonder about is how it copes with data centre troubles.

Closing

I’d like to thank both Handler and RogueClown (see her link on the left) for their assistance in this. I believe a few others gave me a hand on this as well, but unfortunately I have the memory of a goldfish. I did give this as a talk at BazCampYVR yesterday and it went over well. Feel free to point out any corrections or problems as I may just post a follow-up to this.

If ScanLife happens to read this: I ask that at the very least you look into fixing the code generation problem. It surprises me that you guys have a nice little platform to build upon but somehow are hindered by a really basic problem. Also, your software should be improved to get around the error correction issue and also to stop hogging the camera when it isn’t closed in the way it wants to.

I don’t condone your storage of user information even if it’s not asking me about who I am and how much I make. I certainly hope that the information given on your Danish page is incorrect.

Actually it is SHHH#4 - RT @gregeh: Myself at Super Happy Hack House 3, @vanhackspace - http://twitpic.com/oqium

2009-11-08T08:53:38+00:00

Actually it is SHHH#4 - RT @gregeh: Myself at Super Happy Hack House 3, @vanhackspace - http://twitpic.com/oqium

Myself at Super Happy Hack House 3, @vanhackspace - http://twitpic.com/oqium

2009-11-08T08:05:48+00:00

Myself at Super Happy Hack House 3, @vanhackspace - http://twitpic.com/oqium

Goldfish's presentation on Wiimotes + Guitar + PureData was hawt! Critics raved: "Best first presentation of bazcamp evar"

2009-11-07T19:28:00+00:00

Goldfish&aposs presentation on Wiimotes + Guitar + PureData was hawt! Critics raved: "Best first presentation of bazcamp evar"

RT @infil00p Reminder: Tomorrow is BazCamp! http://bazcampyvr.pbworks.com

2009-11-06T21:34:47+00:00

RT @infil00p Reminder: Tomorrow is BazCamp! http://bazcampyvr.pbworks.com

RT @infil00p: Here's a reminder: BazCamp is this Saturday followed by #SHHH http://bazcampyvr.pbworks.com/

2009-11-06T00:44:29+00:00

RT @infil00p: Here&aposs a reminder: BazCamp is this Saturday followed by #SHHH http://bazcampyvr.pbworks.com/

How To: Implement HTML5 Storage on a WebView with Android 2.0

2009-11-05T16:41:08+00:00

So, after many days of using DDMS to poke around the Emulator subsystem I saw the way the new com.android.browser activity interacted with the data. I’ve took a TestCase code (which is like PhoneGap for Android, but stripped donw with only the WebView component), and hacked around with the old stickies example so that I can get it to work. So, here’s the steps to do it:

Step 1: Create a WebView, similar to the one in the PhoneGap source.
Step 2. Get the webSettings, and set the Database Path. The path should be the path to your databases, which will be /path/path/your_package_name/.

appView.setWebChromeClient(new WebClient(this)); WebSettings settings = appView.getSettings(); settings.setJavaScriptEnabled(true); settings.setJavaScriptCanOpenWindowsAutomatically(true); settings.setDatabaseEnabled(true); settings.setDatabasePath("/data/data/org.infil00p.testcase/app_database");

Step 3: Create a WebChromeClient, and override the onExceededDatabaseQuota method. This is called when you first open the application because there’s initially no database setup. This will allow you to set the quota in Java. Since this was test code, I just threw an arbitrary value in here.

final class WebClient extends WebChromeClient { Context mCtx; WebClient(Context ctx) { mCtx = ctx; } public void onExceededDatabaseQuota(String url, String databaseIdentifier, long currentQuota, long estimatedSize, long totalUsedQuota, WebStorage.QuotaUpdater quotaUpdater) { Log.d(LOG_TAG, "We exceeded the quota"); quotaUpdater.updateQuota(100000); } }

OK, we now have a database that we can store things in. When dealing with Android Databases, remember to do all your database debugging on the device or a rooted phone, since you can’t get access to the SQLite Databases from adb with the standard firmware on consumer devices, and this includes the latest images for the Android ADP1 and the Google Ion phones. I’ve just gotten this to work now, and I haven’t tested this method with the Geolocation Database, but I would assume that it would be similar, except that there would just be the Cached Location. What I found odd about this setup was the fact that I couldn’t write the database directly to the emulated SD Card on the device, which would make sense. I’m definitely going to play with this more, and refine it so that it’s less hacky and more polished. However, the stickies example works now, and we will try porting existing iPhone Applications that use this SQLite storage soon.

Auditor-General demands takedown of government report

2009-11-05T16:08:04+00:00

Michael Geist points to a couple of very interesting Twitter posts from the editor of the Globe & Mail’s online politics section. Apparently the Globe had embedded a PDF version of one chapter of a report from Canada’s Auditor-General in this story on Canada’s temporary foreign worker policy. In response, the Auditor-General demanded that they take down the PDF, citing copyright infringement — all Canadian government publications are subject to Crown copyright.

The fact that Crown copyright exists is bad enough. In the US, government publications are in the public domain. This has practical value, insofar as Americans can and do use government information for all sorts of clever and useful purposes without worrying about “intellectual property” restrictions. But more importantly, it squares with the fact that the products of government belong to the public. That the Auditor-General would use the language of copyright to restrict access to public information is shameful.

The Globe has complied with the takedown request, but the PDF itself is still available on Scribd. I don’t know whether the Auditor-General intends to submit a takedown request to Scribd as well, but just in case, here’s a local copy of the report.

Anti-Olympic activists are “terrorists” of “limited intellect”

2009-11-05T02:59:41+00:00

BC Liberal MLA Harry Bloy thinks anti-Olympic protesters are terrorists:

For this group to take away so much from the Games, to have an opinion not shared by many where they have to gather from across Canada to try and disrupt these Games, to stop a young child or young adult with disabilities from carrying the flame—something he had been looking at doing for months since he was chosen, and he couldn’t carry it in his hometown—I think is disgusting and shameful.

They do not understand, these terrorists, the potential goodwill and economic benefits that come from these Games, because they have a limited intellect and do not understand how the world truly operates.

So if the protesters manage to successfully disrupt the Games, does that mean the terrorists win?

Evidently some poor kid’s desire to be exploited by the Olympic machine is more important to Harry Bloy than police harassment of our most vulnerable neighbors; the failure of politicians to live up to their promises to address Vancouver’s housing and homelessness crisis; flagrant violations of fundamental rights; the creation of a $900 million security apparatus that seems to spend most of its time intimidating critics of the Games and their friends; the prospect of massive public debt and the diversion of desperately needed funding from other areas to cover the $6 billion cost of the Olympics; the horrendous effects the Games have had on other host cities; and all the other issues that are motivating anti-Olympic activism in BC. Indeed, according to Harry Bloy, only someone with a “limited intellect” would be more concerned about these issues than about an absurd and pointless spectacle dedicated to elite athletics, nationalism, and corporate sponsorship. Personally, I think the protesters “understand how the world truly operates” far better than Harry Bloy.

It’s not that I expect anything better from politicians, least of all a BC Liberal. I just don’t like it when my friends are insulted by idiots.

BazCamp is coming

2009-11-02T22:38:59+00:00

As taken from Joe’s blog:

This weekend, BazCamp is coming!

VHS is hosting both BazCamp and SHHH. If you haven’t had a chance to check out VHS, I recommend checking it out this weekend. We’re going to be making, sharing and doing things, and we want you to attend. You’re welcome to attend, and you’re welcome to do a talk as long as you can make, hack or craft something. This isn’t for everyone obviously, but if you can sling Art, Wires or Code, and you want to show that stuff off in a creative way, feel free to come down.

The wiki is here: http://bazcampyvr.pbworks.com

I’ll be down and expect to be hosting a talk on ScanLife’s 2D code system. A blog post about the code system will follow after BazCamp has passed.

BazCamp is coming

2009-11-02T17:16:35+00:00

This weekend, BazCamp is coming!

VHS is hosting both BazCamp and SHHH. If you haven’t had a chance to check out VHS, I recommend checking it out this weekend. We’re going to be making, sharing and doing things, and we want you to attend. You’re welcome to attend, and you’re welcome to do a talk as long as you can make, hack or craft something. This isn’t for everyone obviously, but if you can sling Art, Wires or Code, and you want to show that stuff off in a creative way, feel free to come down.

The wiki is here: http://bazcampyvr.pbworks.com

RT @VanHackSpace Remember, in less than two weeks, BazCamp YVR happens: http://bazcampyvr.pbworks.com/

2009-10-28T19:05:47+00:00

RT @VanHackSpace Remember, in less than two weeks, BazCamp YVR happens: http://bazcampyvr.pbworks.com/

RT @VanHackSpace: Remember, in less than two weeks, BazCamp YVR happens: http://bazcampyvr.pbworks.com/

2009-10-28T18:45:56+00:00

RT @VanHackSpace: Remember, in less than two weeks, BazCamp YVR happens: http://bazcampyvr.pbworks.com/

RT @VanHackSpace Remember, in less than two weeks, BazCamp YVR happens: http://bazcampyvr.pbworks.com/

2009-10-28T18:37:08+00:00

RT @VanHackSpace Remember, in less than two weeks, BazCamp YVR happens: http://bazcampyvr.pbworks.com/

RT @VanHackSpace: Remember, in less than two weeks, BazCamp YVR happens: http://bazcampyvr.pbworks.com/

2009-10-28T18:33:15+00:00

RT @VanHackSpace: Remember, in less than two weeks, BazCamp YVR happens: http://bazcampyvr.pbworks.com/

RT @VanHackSpace Remember, in less than two weeks, BazCamp YVR happens: http://bazcampyvr.pbworks.com/

2009-10-28T18:23:01+00:00

RT @VanHackSpace Remember, in less than two weeks, BazCamp YVR happens: http://bazcampyvr.pbworks.com/

Remember, in less than two weeks, BazCamp YVR happens: http://bazcampyvr.pbworks.com/

2009-10-28T18:22:15+00:00

Remember, in less than two weeks, BazCamp YVR happens: http://bazcampyvr.pbworks.com/

RT @lukec Co-working at @vanhackspace Wednesday with other Socialtext-ers @kevinj and @jstash. May see @keeth, @konobi, ... and you?

2009-10-28T17:26:25+00:00

RT @lukec Co-working at @vanhackspace Wednesday with other Socialtext-ers @kevinj and @jstash. May see @keeth, @konobi, ... and you?

RT @lukec Co-working at @vanhackspace Wednesday with other Socialtext-ers @kevinj and @jstash. May see @keeth, @konobi, ... and you?

2009-10-28T16:15:59+00:00

RT @lukec Co-working at @vanhackspace Wednesday with other Socialtext-ers @kevinj and @jstash. May see @keeth, @konobi, ... and you?

s/lots/lets/ - YKWIM it was IOTTCO.

2009-10-27T05:37:53+00:00

s/lots/lets/ - YKWIM it was IOTTCO.

Notes from the VHS Strategic Planning Meeting: http://is.gd/4Dlnk. Summary: On track; consistent vision; lots keep growing!

2009-10-27T05:00:04+00:00

Notes from the VHS Strategic Planning Meeting: http://is.gd/4Dlnk. Summary: On track; consistent vision; lots keep growing!

VHS Principle #4 - Disclose your motives and affiliations.

2009-10-27T04:53:01+00:00

VHS Principle #4 - Disclose your motives and affiliations.

The origin of VHS's Principle #0: Be Excellent to each other: http://bit.ly/N26OK

2009-10-27T03:53:30+00:00

The origin of VHS&aposs Principle #0: Be Excellent to each other: http://bit.ly/N26OK

VHS Principle #3 Eager willingness to learn is all you need. Expertise is not required. It's always okay to ask questions.

2009-10-27T03:53:01+00:00

VHS Principle #3 Eager willingness to learn is all you need. Expertise is not required. It&aposs always okay to ask questions.

RT @vanhackspace VHS Principle #0 - Be excellent to each other. No racism, sexism, homophobia, or classism.

2009-10-27T03:28:04+00:00

RT @vanhackspace VHS Principle #0 - Be excellent to each other. No racism, sexism, homophobia, or classism.

VHS Principle #2 - Group projects are open projects. Open could mean GPL/BSD/CC/... depending on context, project & do-ers

2009-10-27T02:52:00+00:00

VHS Principle #2 - Group projects are open projects. Open could mean GPL/BSD/CC/... depending on context, project & do-ers

VHS Principle #1 - VHS projects are group projects, not individual projects.

2009-10-27T01:51:04+00:00

VHS Principle #1 - VHS projects are group projects, not individual projects.

VHS Principle #0 - Be excellent to each other. No racism, sexism, homophobia, or classism.

2009-10-27T01:21:13+00:00

VHS Principle #0 - Be excellent to each other. No racism, sexism, homophobia, or classism.

RT @VanHackSpace Punkin' Carvin' at VHS - Tuesday October 27th, 7pm - BYOPumpkin... We will have tools! http://hackspace.ca

2009-10-26T21:48:49+00:00

RT @VanHackSpace Punkin&apos Carvin&apos at VHS - Tuesday October 27th, 7pm - BYOPumpkin... We will have tools! http://hackspace.ca

Punkin' Carvin' at VHS - Tuesday October 27th, 7pm - BYOPumpkin (T&T has some), bring yer friends. We will have tools! http://hackspace.ca

2009-10-26T21:25:58+00:00

Punkin&apos Carvin&apos at VHS - Tuesday October 27th, 7pm - BYOPumpkin (T&T has some), bring yer friends. We will have tools! http://hackspace.ca

Stop reading The Metro (and other papers), Metro Vancouver!

2009-10-21T04:44:12+00:00

Not too long ago, The Metro launched a barcode system to allow readers with mobile phones to link up with news articles online while reading the paper. A brilliant move in some ways because North American publications have up until now failed to keep up with their European and Asian counterparts. However, there is a huge flaw and privacy issue that needs to be addressed.

Slight edit before posting: I noticed that this is being used by the National Post also. I don’t care to follow much in regards to CanWest Global’s newspapers (or really Goldman Sachs’ if you want to be technical), so I totally looked this one over. I am certain that other newspapers in this country are doing this as well.

First off, the system that Metro News adopted is provided by ScanLife and is marketed under the name “EZCode”, a technology company based out New York City and Zurich, Germany, and with offices scattered all around the world. The system is very similar to QR Code and Data matrix, except that it’s not either in the public domain (Data matrix) or is a completely open format (QR). And unlike the other two formats, it requires third-party software that is unlikely to be included with a typical phone–whereas manufacturers such as Nokia, Sony, and HTC do include readers for the other two formats out of the box.

An example of a QR code (left) and data matrix (right) linking to my blog. An example of an EZcode is in the first image on the top-right of this entry.

Want to make your own EZcode? You won’t see the option here. You have to register with ScanLife before you even get to play around.

To compound the matters even further, all EZCode links do not go directly to their intended destination, but instead they pass through their servers en route to their intended destination. This sort of action allows ScanLife to perform scummy things such as this:

Yay. Just want to have–more of my private information given to marketers.

It translates from Danish as follows (to the best of Google’s abilities):

Each scan provides valuable information.

Use separate codes to identify when your audience is most receptive and what content they are most interested in.

Use real-time data to provide relevant content – if a user already has scanned one of your codes before you can deliver something new next time.

All your information is available at Scan Life’s platform, whenever you need it.

Also included in the page is what data it gathers after you scan. It’s as follows:

Number of scans
Number of unique users
Time and date of scan
Name of the scanned code (for unique locations)
Statistics (Age, gender, income, zip code) — when it is available
Mobile phone model
Provider

While I care not to accept to the EULA provided when I install the crummy program on my phone, I do believe that people who have installed this software are completely unaware of the fact that ScanLife is profiting off of your clicks. Your phone number and statistics could be sold to third-party marketers who may then start to harass you on your mobile phone. For now, that is illegal in both the United States and Canada, but it wouldn’t be surprisingly if down the road the rules are changed due to the changing nature of the telephone “landscape”.

It needs to made more apparent to readers what they’re getting into when they adopt this program. As well, newspapers shouldn’t be relying on these non-open systems and just adopt something that the rest of the world uses. It is not uncommon to see the use of QR codes in Japanese newspapers and video games, and it is also just as common in Europe.

Why are we adopting a system that is closed? What sort of kickback are the newspapers and other media outlets getting for using this service instead of something else?

This is just another reason to watch what these EULAs ask for and to also withhold certain information. I recommend not installing this software at all.

Full House! 20 hackers come to learn & share about Arduino and many other topics!

2009-10-21T04:33:35+00:00

Full House! 20 hackers come to learn & share about Arduino and many other topics!

Reminder: Introduction to the Arduino tonight at VHS!! 7pm - http://hackspace.ca

2009-10-21T00:05:23+00:00

Reminder: Introduction to the Arduino tonight at VHS!! 7pm - http://hackspace.ca

RT @VanHackSpace: Reminder: Introduction to the Arduino tonight at VHS! BazCamp is < three weeks away!!!!! http://bazcampyvr.pbworks.com/

2009-10-20T17:49:53+00:00

RT @VanHackSpace: Reminder: Introduction to the Arduino tonight at VHS! BazCamp is < three weeks away!!!!! http://bazcampyvr.pbworks.com/

Reminder: Introduction to the Arduino tonight at VHS! BazCamp is only less than three weeks away!!!!! http://bazcampyvr.pbworks.com/

2009-10-20T17:29:28+00:00

Reminder: Introduction to the Arduino tonight at VHS! BazCamp is only less than three weeks away!!!!! http://bazcampyvr.pbworks.com/

Really productive meeting tonight at @vanhackspace reflecting on our past year and where we want to go. Mostly fine-tuning (which is great!)

2009-10-20T06:03:05+00:00

Really productive meeting tonight at @vanhackspace reflecting on our past year and where we want to go. Mostly fine-tuning (which is great!)

RT @VanHackSpace: 5. Take it easy. [IMHO Rule 5: Take it easy is one of the most important rules.]

2009-10-20T06:00:52+00:00

RT @VanHackSpace: 5. Take it easy. [IMHO Rule 5: Take it easy is one of the most important rules.]

5. Take it easy.

2009-10-20T03:37:48+00:00

5. Take it easy.

@tararobertson we don't have many women members and that concerns us. we want hacker diversity! Our current location doesn't help this. :(

2009-10-18T07:45:13+00:00

@tararobertson we don&apost have many women members and that concerns us. we want hacker diversity! Our current location doesn&apost help this. :(

RT @VanHackSpace Awesome panoramic photo of the VHS Clubhouse: http://i33.tinypic.com/208d5co.jpg

2009-10-17T19:56:40+00:00

RT @VanHackSpace Awesome panoramic photo of the VHS Clubhouse: http://i33.tinypic.com/208d5co.jpg

@VanHackSpace are there many women who are members? the photo is all dudes.

2009-10-17T19:45:41+00:00

@VanHackSpace are there many women who are members? the photo is all dudes.

Awesome panoramic photo of the VHS Clubhouse: http://i33.tinypic.com/208d5co.jpg

2009-10-17T19:30:11+00:00

Awesome panoramic photo of the VHS Clubhouse: http://i33.tinypic.com/208d5co.jpg

A war on digital content in libraries?

2009-10-16T18:10:01+00:00

Earlier this week, the New York Times reported that at least two major publishers are refusing to distribute e-books to public libraries. Macmillan and Simon & Schuster feel that e-books in libraries are incompatible with their business model. The fact that this violates the spirit (and possibly the letter) of the first sale doctrine is apparently not an issue for them. They can’t figure out how to adapt to the modern world, with its computers and internets and whatnot, so they’re doing what they can to prop up that business model against the tide of history.

If you’ve ever tried to use your library’s e-book collection, this probably won’t surprise you. Selection tends to be hit-and-miss, the user experience provided by most e-book vendors is appalling, and both problems are a direct result of content providers’ paranoia about their profit margins in the digital world. We’ve already seen that Macmillan and Simon & Schuster won’t sell e-books to libraries; other publishers don’t do the e-book thing at all because they’re afraid of piracy or too scared of change to see a market in e-books. In some cases, when you “check out” an e-book at your library, other patrons are prevented from signing out that “copy” of the book, which makes no sense at all — except, of course, as a mechanism for content providers to maximize their control and thereby, theoretically, their profits. I can’t even use large portions of my local library’s e-book collection because you have to install DRM-enforcing software on your computer (even for the public-domain e-books!), and the software in question doesn’t run on Linux. Some libraries have found ways around the usability problems, but if the publishers won’t sell you e-books under any circumstances, there’s not much that libraries can do about it.

So much for e-books. Now we learn (if a rumor on Twitter is to be trusted) that Baker & Taylor, the biggest wholesale vendor of library materials, is being forced by Hollywood to sell rental versions of DVDs to its customers, rather than the more feature-rich versions available on the retail market. In other words, a lot of content will only be available to individual consumers who shell out extra cash for their own personal copies. Aside from simply being unfair to library patrons, the studios’ actions here undermine the public library’s role as a sort of community memory, since the extra content simply won’t be available to the community as a whole.

The DVD restriction is not an earth-shaking development — we’re talking about special features on major-studio releases, after all — and it hasn’t been publicly confirmed yet, but if we combine that with the e-book problems outlined above, we see a trend on the part of “Big Content” to screw over public libraries in the digital realm in the name of profit and a failing business model. And when you add a legislative regime that’s moving towards the absurd restrictions on library use and distribution of digital content that we saw in last year’s proposed copyright law, it starts to look like maybe there is a real problem here.

@tararobertson JD is one of us. He is also all of us and none of us too though.

2009-10-16T06:07:09+00:00

@tararobertson JD is one of us. He is also all of us and none of us too though.

What should and shouldn’t GVTAPS be tweeting?

2009-10-16T05:12:37+00:00

Everybody and their dog has a Twitter account these days and it should be no surprise that the Greater Vancouver Transit Authority Police Service (or GVTAPS for short) has one for thesmelves.

While I am not here to make public my position on how the police conducts themselves overall, I do wish to put into question whether or not it is a bright idea to have an on-duty sergeant (in this case, Sgt. Tom Seaman) actively tweeting, I do wish to point out some oddball and questional tweets.

Case in point is this tweet and the followup all made today:

In this situation, a suspicious person reportedly came on to the train brandishing a knife that may or may not exist and was reported to transit police. Why is the officer tweeting about it before any action is taken? It seems almost pointless and produces fear mongering. If someone like myself were to check my Twitter while en-route to a station between King George (referred to as “KG”), Scott Road (”SR”), or Columbia, I’d be a tad apprehensive. The likelihood of myself boarding the same train as this supposed individual would have been small due to the distance between the stations, but regardless, it might make me a bit uneasy about boarding the train.

Quite simply, the tweet is unnecessary. If they had tweeted after the fact that they caught this guy (which they did not), then all would be well and it wouldn’t be something worthwhile commenting on here in the blog. However, they did tweet this and then reported that the guy was never found.

The other question I have is how the heck did the reporting person know that someone had a knife hidden in their bag?

I hope that in the future that tweets are more common with government and civil agencies, but I do want to see some caution thrown in as well. I am glad to see that Sgt. Seaman is taking the time to take on public relations in a realm that is moreso chaotic and anarchistic than what he and the force would be used to, but my concern still rests.

RT @VanHackSpace: VHS extends it's heartfelt joy for the safety of Balloon Boy and the future of personal balloon flight.

2009-10-16T04:42:35+00:00

RT @VanHackSpace: VHS extends it&aposs heartfelt joy for the safety of Balloon Boy and the future of personal balloon flight.

"... it depends how you tokenize your dishes. Speaking of tokenizing ..."

2009-10-16T04:30:33+00:00

"... it depends how you tokenize your dishes. Speaking of tokenizing ..."

VHS extends it's heartfelt joy for the safety of Balloon Boy and the future of personal balloon flight.

2009-10-16T04:21:35+00:00

VHS extends it&aposs heartfelt joy for the safety of Balloon Boy and the future of personal balloon flight.

Election Campaign Finance Tools

2009-10-13T20:54:03+00:00

Creator: Luke Closs

Tags: blog post, elections, visible government

Summary: (comment)

(Cross posted from the Vancouver Open Data mailing list)

I've made some progress on scaling up John Jensen's Campaign Finance Visualization today, so I'll take some time to explain what I've built and where I could use some help going forward.

My goal today was to make some forward progress on building a way to crowdsource the data-entry of campaign finance data, and then crowdsource the analysis and visualization of this data through a simple REST API. I'll discuss this in two parts.

I have created a working name for this tool: CEFET: Crowdsourced Election Finance Examination Tool. Open to other ideas. :)

Problem 1: Data Entry

The electoral data currently lives in PDFs of scanned, handwritten documents on various electoral district websites. To do anything useful, we need people to read those PDFs and then enter the data into a structured format for each candidate. The easiest integration point (for me) was to create a Socialtext Workspace where we could use spreadsheets to enter the data, and then use the Socialtext REST API to get at the data programatically. To this end, I have created a workspace and populated it with data JohnJ collected:

https://www.socialtext.net/cefet/

Each candidate gets their own spreadsheet page (eg: https://www.socialtext.net/cefet/index.cgi?darrell_mussatto), and we use tags to record this candidate's position (eg: Mayor) and their district (eg: north-vancouver).

With this workspace in place, there is now the opportunity for people from other electoral districts to begin creating pages for the candidates in their district. The barrier to contribute to this is fairly low - you do not need programming experience, just need to be able to edit online spreadsheets & wikis. I have created a page to explain how to do this here:

https://www.socialtext.net/cefet/index.cgi?adding_finance_data_for_a_candidate

Problem 2: Visualization and Analysis

The visualization that JohnJ created using Python and graphviz is great, but I'm pretty sure it's not the only interesting visualization we could make. So we need a way for other software hackers to create interesting visualizations from this dataset. The answer is to build a simple web-friendly API for the finance data we are crowdsourcing. With a simple API in place, we can re-implement JohnJ's graphviz graphic and show it for other districts, and we can create brand new visualizations.

I have created a very simple application (I ripped off a lot of the Vantrash REST API infrastructure) that does 2 things:

Accept updates when data on the wiki changes (uses the Socialtext REST API's super cool but undocumented WebHook capability)
Exposes the data through various APIs

Currently, I've only implemented one API call, which retrieves all of the contributions across all districts:

http://cefet.wikrad.com:3009/contributions.html

We can easily add more API calls and more representations of the data. I've documented some ideas for where to improve the API here:

https://www.socialtext.net/cefet/index.cgi?cefet_rest_api

With this basic infrastructure in place, I could use help from people interested in creating visualizations of the election finance data. I can help build useful APIs to the data as needed by API users. Ideally, we will build the visualizations and they will work for any electoral district.

Other remaining work:

Purchase a domain and set up cefet as a proper site (it is just running as a developer environment now)
Build out more API & more representations
Re-create JohnJ's graphviz visualization from the API data
Build some new visualizations
Build a landing page with links to the API and some different reports

In Summary

I've build a proof of concept. With some interested volunteers (for data entry), and some interested visualization hackers we should have a pretty decent platform for exploring and analyzing the campaign contributions.

<pause, big breath>

Let me know what you think of this. If enough people are interested perhaps we could have a little work party on this project.

Generating a Many Eyes compatible data format gives instant access to Flare visualization and community with zero lines of code...

contributed by Audrey Tang on Oct 13 1:51pm

Oh wait, apparently IBM Many Eyes does CSV as well. That means really zero lines of code...

contributed by Audrey Tang on Oct 13 1:54pm

Why does Jason Kenney hate refugees?

2009-10-13T20:15:17+00:00

A few months ago, Canadian Immigration Minister Jason Kenney (who notoriously once stated that “Canada isn’t a hotel”) announced new visa requirements for people visiting Canada from Mexico and the Czech Republic. People from those countries now “have to apply for temporary resident visas in order to visit, study or work in Canada.” The reason? Those two countries are the top sources of applications for refugee status. Kenney’s argument at the time was that “many of the asylum requests are either rejected or abandoned, raising questions about the legitimacy of the claimants’ allegations that they face persecution in their home countries.”

In other words, the Canadian state responded to a high volume of refugee claims not by giving more resources to the people who evaluate the claims, nor by finding better ways to separate “genuine” refugees from those filing false claims, but by making it harder to apply for refugee status — as if the only real refugees are the ones with the resources to get around the arbitrary obstacles that Canada’s immigration bureaucracy puts in their way.

And now we learn that deportations from Canada have increased dramatically over the past ten years — and the majority of those deported are failed refugee claimants:

Figures obtained by The Canadian Press through Access to Information show Canada removed 12,732 people last year — a major increase from the 8,361 who were deported in 1999.

A series of steady increases over the years shows no sign of abating in 2009. By Aug. 25 of this year, 8,999 had already been deported.

Statistics from the Canada Border Services Agency show failed refugee claimants accounted for three-quarters of deportations while the remainder were often removed on criminal or security grounds.

[...]

The government explains the spike in deportations as the logical result of a jump in refugee applications; there were 35,000 refugee claims last year, and the government says the system can only handle 25,000. [...] But the stats cast some doubt on Ottawa’s explanation. Figures obtained from the Immigration and Refugee Board indicate the 35,000 refugee applications received last year is no record.

While the figure represented a six-year high, it was still far less than the 44,000 cases received in 2001 and 39,000 in the following year. While there was an increase in claims in 2008, the government also completed far fewer cases than in the past.

Refugee advocates say the explanation is simple: the government has wanted to deport more people, and has taken steps to do it in recent years.

(I highly recommend reading the whole article, which goes into detail about some of the failures of the current immigration system and the appalling consequences for rejected refugee claimants.)

There’s an interesting bit of circular reasoning at work here. The rationale for the new visa requirements was that most refugee claims are rejected; the implication was that most such claims were made under false pretences. But we know that the people who control Canada’s borders have been intentionally rejecting more applicants as a matter of policy. Then they use the resulting increase in rejections as a pretext to keep more and more people out of the country. It’s a deliberate vicious cycle — and the people who get screwed are the ones trying to escape misery and persecution back home. That’s one hell of a legacy, Mr. Kenney.

Bad IRC bot design

2009-10-13T17:31:45+00:00

It’s odd for me to even think about design when it comes to an IRC bot, but it is in fact something to always aim for regardless of how pointless or silly it might seem to be. Something simple to keep in mind is that it should never execute code nor output data without some sort of filtering either into it or out of it.

Here’s a dumb idea: execute Perl code from Codepad and then output the results. If you want to knock the bot offline, here’s a way how:

18:00:30  &afreak> .pl print (chr(104),chr(116),chr(112),chr(58),
         chr(47),chr(47),chr(49),chr(110),chr(106),chr(51),chr(99)
         ,chr(116),chr(46),chr(111),chr(114),chr(103))
18:00:33 -!- cheesebot [cheesebot@setjmp.net] has quit [User has
         been banned from $IRC (Spam bots. Email $USER@$IRC)]
18:00:34 -!- KaeseEs [ottoskzny@setjmp.net] has quit [User has
         been banned from $IRC (Spam bots. Email $USER@$IRC)]

Why anybody would think that it would be a good idea to execute code like this is really silly. We weren’t able to figure out a way to make it quit on its own, so the next best thing was to just knock it off completely.

A simple search on the IRC network’s forums produced the offending URL.

Another feature seen on plenty of bots are those who reply when someone pastes a URL in the channel. It’ll grab the <TITLE> tag information and then spew out the data from within. Of course, this is ripe for abuse as you can see here:

18:09:13  @lark> http://randomurl.com/randomfile.php
18:09:13 -!- OBAMATRON [OBAMATRON@O.B.A.M.A.T.R.O.N] has quit
         [User has been banned from $IRC (Spam bots. Email
         $USER@$IRC)]
18:09:14 -!- Aphex [heh@thats.not.change.we.can.believe.in] has
         quit [User has been banned from IRC (Spam bots. Email
         $USER@$IRC)]

As you can see, one just has to place the offending URL that was in the Perl code into the tag and then paste said page with the “exploit” (if you wish to call it that) into the channel, knocking the bot and possibly the bot owner out.

Fortunately, most of these autobans for pasting offending URLs into channels are limited to IRCds such as Unreal, where services are almost a definite. However, it’s still poor practice to have the bot spew out data arbitrarily. Perhaps a solution would be to filter out any results that contain URLs and instead just deny the output.

Anyway, I hope I never have to blog about IRC bots ever again.

Is Google Wave Secure?

2009-10-12T23:18:15+00:00

Wrote a blog post for Straight.com about the possible use of Google Wave robots to compromise communcation.

Blog post here.

Inline Image:

No C3 this year. :(

2009-10-11T22:37:20+00:00

For those of you who know me, or have met me in Berlin, I regret to inform you that I will not be able to attend this year’s 26th Annual Chaos Communications Congress. It seems rather odd, being someone who shares the name with a certain fire breathing turtle dragon, that I would not be going, but instead I will be spending Christmas at my sister’s house in Kamloops, BC.

Given the fact that the majority of people who read this blog have probably never even been to Kamloops, It’s about 4 hours north of Vancouver, and is an example of ugly North American Urban Sprawl. We once passed through there with a so-called Anarchist from New Zealand who threw a shit fit over how ugly Kamloops was and how it was the worst thing that he had ever seen in his life (until we showed him Edson, Alberta). I do not like Kamloops, and think that Kamloops sucks.

So, why am I going to somewhere that sucks instead of Berlin, Germany, which very much is one of the coolest, if not the coolest place on the fucking planet?

The reason is that Erin Bee is pregnant. In about 25 weeks, I will be a proud father of a newborn baby. This means that I will have to deal with providing for a child, and will probably only be able to afford to go to CCC once every two years anyway. (Christmas in Germany is FUCKING AWESOME! I can’t stress that enough!) I will have to make some compromises, and that means that this year I will have to go visit my family in a suburban wasteland, and spend New Years Eve in No Fun City. (Note: Vancouver has the WORST New Years Eve ever!)

Am I sad about not going to CCC?

YES! Very much! I have a lot of friends who are going to CCC this year, and CCC will be full of EPIC WIN! It’s the best conference that I’ve ever been to in my life, and I think that it beats every North American Open Source or Hacker Conference in scope, and in cross-discipline communication. The Chaos Computer Club has been around for over 25 years, and is the best at organizing hacker conferences as far as I’m concerned. HAR was a fucking blast, and I had a lot of fun, but I have to admit that it’s not quite as special as my first trip to Berlin for 25C3, especially since that was my very first trip to Europe.

OK, So where are I planning on being next year?

I plan to attend these events for sure:

MakerFaire SF 2010 – I will go to this every year with the family until they no longer have MakerFaire. This is full of win
Toorcamp (if it happens)
Next HOPE – The Last HOPE conference got me involved in Hackerspaces and got me excited about Hacking again.
Burning Man (I’ve never been)
27C3 – YES! I will go to every odd Congress.

Hopefully next year is good. I’m looking forward to it, although the Olympics does seem like a giant steaming piece of turd in the middle of it, with its violation of free speech, freedom of association, and freedom of assembly. However, I’ll blog more about that a later time.

@vanhackspace @nitobi Hey would either of you have a hacksaw I could borrow in gastown this afternoon?

2009-10-09T23:22:07+00:00

@vanhackspace @nitobi Hey would either of you have a hacksaw I could borrow in gastown this afternoon?

Peace, Obama-style

2009-10-09T21:50:40+00:00

It’s been clear since early in his campaign for the presidency that Barack Obama is committed to escalating the war in Afghanistan and Pakistan. He has added 21,000 troops to the American military presence in Afghanistan since taking office, and is currently contemplating how many more to send (one of his generals wants an additional 60,000 soldiers). The immediate goal of Obama’s Afghan policy is to prop up Hamid Karzai — a man whose legacy so far includes widespread corruption, election rigging, and the legalization of rape — and, of course, to continue the war against the Taliban. Genuine, lasting peace in Afghanistan is not on anyone’s agenda.

Meanwhile, just over the border, Obama has been expanding the war into Pakistan with a series of air strikes, killing innocent civilians (including children) and threatening Pakistan’s already-fragile political stability — which seems like a pretty stupid thing to do if you want to keep nuclear weapons out of the hands of those wacky Islamic fundamentalists. Again, it’s hard to see how this policy is doing anything to promote peace in Central Asia.

Under the circumstances, it’s no surprise that ordinary people in the region are less than thrilled to learn that Obama has been awarded the Nobel Peace Prize:

“I don’t know how he can get this prize,” said Najeeb, a 30-year-old shopkeeper attending a friend’s wedding party [in Kabul]. “Maybe it’s been awarded for all the houses they are bombing, or perhaps it’s for all his soldiers that are dying in Afghanistan and Iraq.”

Obama’s deployment of the tools of war is not restricted to the Middle East. His administration has also been expanding the American military presence in Latin America. The US claims that the military installations it’s planning to use in Colombia don’t count as new military bases — they’re merely “Cooperative Security Locations” leased from the Colombian state, which somehow makes them completely different and definitely not army bases. True, the troop levels involved are relatively small (the numbers would increase from less than 300 troops to no more than 800), but it’s clear that the intent here is to step up the US drug war in Latin America. Dropping more soldiers into the middle of a 40-year-old guerrilla war is not going to create peace in Colombia or anywhere else.

All in all, it seems that the best way to win the Nobel Peace Prize is to continue with the American imperial project in a manner slightly less offensive than that of George W. Bush. I’d say the decision tarnishes the Nobel prize’s reputation, but these sorts of controversies are not exactly news: Henry Kissinger, for example, was awarded the same prize at the height of the Vietnam War, while Gandhi was overlooked despite multiple nominations. I don’t even think it’s reasonable to hope that this latest prize will lead to serious scrutiny of Obama’s foreign policy: his approach to Afghanistan and Pakistan has been receiving substantial attention and analysis since long before his inauguration, and the Colombian thing is more or less business as usual and will therefore be ignored. All you can really do is shrug your shoulders, admit that some folks in Norway decided to be particularly stupid today, and move on.

At @vanhackspace for PostgreSQL night starting after 7pm.

2009-10-09T00:09:47+00:00

At @vanhackspace for PostgreSQL night starting after 7pm.